1. Keynote- I use a lot in teaching... and some of the new special effects are cool esp moving objects from slide to slide !! .... but I wouldn't do it for this alone.

2. Pages- make loads of handouts and supplements for class... cool features esp. mail merge... I can merge my class roll with a letter or Note. New Templates...Nice, but not 100% essential.

3. Numbers - This is a biggie for me. I hate graphing in Excel (like chiseling granite), so I go all the way back to OS 9 and use the old Cricket Graph. WHY ? it's very easy and 100% manuipulative like Numbers , BUT the current Numbers has no error bars or curve fitting features, a MUST for scientific data. New one DOES !! THAT's the "Tipper" for me !!

so I have 4 Macs - $94 Family Pack at MacMall - no tax... and although the feature upgrades isn't huge... it only costs c $20 a copy for the new stuff is worth it to me. My son is pitching in $25 for his copy. He loves Pages for developing culinary Menus.

turns out, i like it well enough, but i have no reason to dislike MS Word and Excel (and don't really use PowerPoint or Keynote). in fact, when i want to do a presentation like at a conference, i just create a webpage and scroll down and use that for my visual aides and instead of handouts i just supply the URL.

anyway, my co-workers and employer use Word for all attachments. the master's students i am working with who are writing their theses must use Word for the reviewing tools. and i force the rest of my students to do anything written using Google Docs. i just don't have room for iWork. i take that back, when the tooth fairy and Santa Claus come to my house they always leave a nice letter and i use Pages to create it. i may upgrade, but it's really not smart money spent for me. instead, it would just be curiosity geek money spent.

I'm waiting for Claris Works to return. I miss the database stuff, and didn't go to Office until OS X, and can't see the $$ for filemaker, for my few uses. iWorks 09 probably won't happen here. Not real soon, anyway.

Gins is hip with Office - Word & Excel. She liked Keynote when she did presentations for her MBA degree. I don't think she would ever consider using Pages or Tables, mostly because she already found a product she likes and works as expected.

The only module I find somewhat interesting is Numbers, because of the ease with which one assemble rather complex table-constructs. I used it for a work-flow calculation and liked the way in which one could add another tablette, so to speak.BUT, I would also need to be able, to generate my invoices in Numbers then, to be interconnected.And I can't find a way of having zero-values NOT displayed. That would be the case in an invoice blank, where the unit price is multiplied by a given quantity. If the quantity is zero, there should be nothing shown in the total cell. Does that make sense?Like: €25 times 3 equals €75but€25 times (nothing) equals (nothing)Numbers always shows a zero, which looks dumb.Both Excel and NeoOffice have that feature, but I can't find it anywhere in Numbers.Do you know?

The only module I find somewhat interesting is Numbers, because of the ease with which one assemble rather complex table-constructs. I used it for a work-flow calculation and liked the way in which one could add another tablette, so to speak.BUT, I would also need to be able, to generate my invoices in Numbers then, to be interconnected.And I can't find a way of having zero-values NOT displayed. That would be the case in an invoice blank, where the unit price is multiplied by a given quantity. If the quantity is zero, there should be nothing shown in the total cell. Does that make sense?Like: €25 times 3 equals €75but€25 times (nothing) equals (nothing)Numbers always shows a zero, which looks dumb.Both Excel and NeoOffice have that feature, but I can't find it anywhere in Numbers.Do you know?

In Excel if you put a formula in a cell it shows a "0.00" unless you tell it not to. Can one tell it not to in Numbers? This would be important to me also

dave

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